CHRIS KUTSCHERA 40 YEARS of JOURNALISM
(Texts and Photos)

www.Chris-Kutschera.com

YEMEN: A
Yemeni woman's fight for freedom

Nothing
at first sight betrays the strong will and bravery that
lie behind the smiles and the gentle manners of Khadija
al Salami, the softly-spoken cultural counsellor at the
Yemeni embassy in Paris. But Mrs al Salamis story
is an unusual and inspiring one.

From humble beginnings in Sanaa, Khadija
al Salami achieved diplomatic status as representative
of her country in one of Europes most vibrant capital
cities, but it was not an easy struggle and she needs
the 400 pages of her book, The Tears of Sheba, Tales
of survival and intrigue in Arabia, to unravel the
story of the 40 years of her life.

Published in the UK by John Wiley,
a French translation of The Tears of Sheba was
recently published by Editions Actes Sud; a unique book,
which blends Khadija al Salamis personal history
with the political and tribal history of Yemen.

The Yemeni civil war

Khadija al Salami was only two years
old in 1968 when her home city of Sanaa was shelled by
the Republicans during the Yemeni civil war (1962-1969),
but she recalls how horrified she was when a small girl
of her neighbourhood was killed. "I still remember, she
says, having my milk bottle in my mouth, seeing the dead
Saida. I was so shocked".

But the worst occured when her father,
Mohammed Murzah, who was conscripted as a medic to give
first aid to the wounded on the battlefield, came back
shellshocked from very heavy fighting between the Royalists
and the Republicans: "The deafening roar of the battle
intertwined with the screams of his comrades overwhelmed
him. Squatting on the ground, he found a rusted oil drum
with the top cut off and pulled it over him", writes Khadija
al Salami. "When the hell around him subsided, he emerged
from the flimsy barrel miraculously unscathed, physically.
Yet Father was a changed man... He staggered from the
battlefield in a daze". He was crazy. Somehow, he found
his way back to Sanaa, reached his home, started beating
his wife, Fatima, and slashed at her face with an iron
key in his hand, hacking out a deep gash in her mouth,
nearly cutting out her tongue. The child witnessed the
whole scene.

Eventually
her mother lost hope and filed for a divorce. She remarried
a tribesman, and Khadija al Salami was sent to live with
her grand mother in a humble home in the old quarter of
Sanaa.

Ashamed of being poor

At primary school, the girl was ashamed
of being poor, the daughter of a mad man and that her
mother had married again. These "family secrets" were
such a heavy burden that during all her years at school
she never mentioned her family. When asked her name on
the first day of class she answered simply "Khadija".
"Bint min?", the teacher probed. "The daughter of whom?"
I hesitated at what for other students was a simple question,
but my life was anything but simple. .. But I had never
known Mohamed Murzah as a father. Furthermore my Grand
Father Hamud carried the Murzah name too, and I hated
no one in the world more than him.... I would be damned
if I took Grandfather Hamuds name. "Al-Salami",
I finally stuttered to the teacher. I had replaced Murzah
with my mothers name. "Khadija al Salami is my name".
She kept it to the day.

More grief and pain were to come.
Khadija al Salami was only 11 when her uncle, Ali al Salami,
decided to marry her to a Yemeni friend living in Damascus
"before something unfortunate happens". A few years earlier,
she had gone with her grand mother, Amina, to attend a
collective wedding of 25 couples in a village. The following
morning they visited the homes of the 25 grooms, and on
entering the houses, Khadija noticed before anything else
"a large white sheet spanning the wall beside the bedroom
door, suspended from a nail at each corner. A dark red
stain attesting to the virginity of the bride adorned
the centre of the spread, with the grooms and the
brides mothers standing proudly beneath it". Khadija
al Salami asked what the vermillion streaks on the sheets
were, and her grandmother Amina said it was "sharaf" --
honour -- and she understood that the stains came from
the blood of the brides. "I curled my nose indignantly,
dreading my own wedding day", writes Khadija al Salami.

Married at 11

In
an effort to appease her anxious mother, Khadijas
matchmaker uncle explained he had obliged her future husband
not to have intercourse with her for three years, until
she reached the age of 14. But after the wedding, he drove
Khadija to her new husbands home and told her: "Your
husband will come in a few minutes, and you are to do
exactly as he tells you"! I understood immediately what
he meant", writes Khadija. After a brief and unequal struggle,
she was raped by her husband. But after three weeks of
fighting, he finally had to admit defeat and brought Khadija
al Salami back to her mother in Sanaa. Her uncle disowned
her. Khadija al Salami says the injustice convinced her
that life was a battle to be fought and won, with no allies
but her own will. It also caused her to question her religious
faith.

So what pushed this secretive young
woman to disclose in print the secrets that as a young
girl she was horrified to reveal ?

"I reached a point in my life where
I became happy with myself", answers Khadija al Salami
in her office at the Yemen embassy in Paris. "I wanted
to inform people that I am not the person they believe.
I am different. I had a difficult life. My childhood was
not happy, but these problems did not prevent me from
aspiring to and reaching my aims".

"I dont know how I reached this
point", she muses. "Maybe its because I want to
help the girls who dream. It is not easy, true enough,
but if you have a dream, you can achieve it. Just be strong,
I am an example. I come from a poor and modest family,
I had more problems than anybody, still... I managed to
make it".

What of her grand mother Amina and
mother Fatima, who themselves were forced to marry young
and to men they hated ? How could they force the
young Khadija to follow the same destiny? "My grand mother
and my mother loved me. For them, a woman is born to be
put in the grave, or to get married, she has no other
role. They learn this from their mothers, from their grand
mothers"

With education, I could become
anybody

After her arranged wedding -- "an
arranged rape, not a marriage" -- Khadija resumed school.
"I felt strongly even at that age that with an education
I could become anybody and do anything I wanted. People
would one day look up to me because of my diploma, and
not because of what family I belonged to. As a result,
I became a different person at school, where I felt that
people valued me more, and I valued myself more".

To help her mother who was struggling
financially to care for her children, Khadija al Salami
looked for a job, at 11. Looking like a 14 year old girl,
she started working at the telephone exchange on the afternoon
shift. Then a friend introduced her to a Sanaa TV director
who wanted to develop a childrens programme and
was looking for a child to host the show. She got the
job. From then on, her life took a turn for the better.
At secondary school she decided to learn English and she
went for a month to Cambridge.

Then she won a scholarship to further
her studies in English at Georgetown University. So in
1983 the 16-year-old Khadija landed in Washington where
she would live for almost four years. She writes, "In
America the burden of my past, of trying to keep it all
hidden, miraculously lifted from my weary shoulders...
For the first time in my life, I lived in the present,
and stopped dwelling on a painful past".

She became friendly with Yahya al
Mutawakil, then Yemeni ambassador to the US, who liked
her and became like a father figure.

The contemporary history of
Yemen

Her
friendship with the ambassador opens a series of new chapters
in her book -- about the statesmen and politicians who
shaped the history of the Republic of Yemen after 1962.
Khadija al Salami got to know some of these men who would
help shape the future of her homeland quite well, especially
Yahya al Mutawakil, Mujahid abu Shawared and Mohammed
abu Lahum, and she writes long exciting chapters about
their careers, based on rare personal confidences and
interviews. For example, she reveals that in 1974 "13
of the 14 members of the Command council raised their
hands to elect Mujahid abu Shawareb to succeed al Iryani
as President". But he refused the job, and after a new
vote, the council elected Ibrahim al Hamdi, who was President
of Yemen until murdered by his successor, Ahmed al Ghasmi,
on 11 October 1977.

Khadija al Salami also reveals how
Ahmed al Ghasmi was himself killed after less than a year
in power, on 24 June 1978, by a booby-trapped briefcase
sent from Aden.

With these personal testimonies, we
glimpse a fascinating history of the politics of modern
Yemen. It reveals, for example,the "colossal ambition"
of President Ibrahim al Hamdi and how the Yemeni North-South
civil war developed in 1994. Asked why she deals in her
book only with such famous leaders, mostly of tribal extraction,
but not with Yemeni intellectuals, Khadija al Salami answers:
"These "famous men" were more attached to me than I was
to them. They kept contacting me. In Washington, Yahya
al Mutawakil admired my personality -- how could such
a young Yemeni girl live alone and study in America. The
same happened with Mujahid abu Shawareb in Paris. For
me, at first, he was a tribal and illiterate man. I was
not intimidated and not interested. Then our common friend
insisted, and when I got to know him, I was impressed.
But they cannot tell me what to do -- not as they do with
their daughters".

The Yemeni intellectuals

"The Yemeni "intellectuals" are absent,
because they are confused, frequently they say something
and do another; they have double standards and are afraid
of voicing their true opinions for fear of being killed
by the fundamentalists, which is disappointing".

After graduating from Mount Vernon
College in America in 1986, Khadija al Salami returned
to Yemen, but could not get along with her brother Hamud,
who had taken over the role of family protector. So she
left for France in the summer of 1986, becoming press
attaché in 1993, after her marriage to an American,
Charles Hoot, on 2 August 1990 -- the day Saddam Hussain
invaded Kuwait!

Now cultural counsellor, Khadija shares
her time between her work at the embassy, and making films.
She has shot 20 films about Yemeni archaeology, women
and democracy.

Her last film tells the story of a
girl accused of killing her husband at the age of 15 who
was sentenced to death, spending nine years in prison
before being pardoned by President Ali Abdullah Salih.
"This girl reminds me of myself", says Khadija al Salami

"I am trying in my book and in my
films to cover sensitive issues. In our Yemeni culture,
women are not allowed to express themselves freely, not
even about daily life. They are not allowed to speak in
public. But if we want our society to change, we must
speak out and ask questions. In my film about the girl
in prison, I also shot footage of my friend Asma, who
became minister of human rights, to illustrate what women
can do when they are helped by their family"..

Khadija al Salami has proved what
a determined woman can achieve if she has the will. "Now",
she concludes, "I feel free, I have fulfilled my dreams,
and I appreciate every step I take when walking the streets
of Paris".